Looking at 3D printers...

RCHeliguy · Jun 12, 2021

My 3D printer has been resting lately, but this morning is printing newly designed shorter foot plate isolator supports that are a result of my tweaking my flight pedal position such that they no longer fit under the original supports.

I'm not giving my printer the same workout you did, but I still love being able to wake up, design something on the spot, and then let it do rest of the work. I can't imagine not having a 3D printer at this point.

@HoiHman do you keep yours busy pumping out parts for steering wheels? I'm curious what you might be doing that required 2 years of continuous printing.

HoiHman · Jun 12, 2021

@RCHeliguym, the 3D printer has produced a lot of steering wheels, SFX, belt tensioner and lots of different parts.

I can't image "life" without a 3d printer anymore either, it's one of the best tech inventions of the last decade.

RCHeliguy · Jun 12, 2021

What I had hoped and has been true was that iteration would be very simple and quick. This morning when I spent about 20 minutes modifying the design of something I had designed half a year ago and then kicked off a print job, that was exactly what I was hoping for when I got my 3D printer.

It doesn't hurt that what I'm printing out is only about $4 in materials for a custom solution. When I think about shipping for a small part being my entire cost, it just makes too much sense.

MaddogBC · Jun 16, 2021

What do you guys think of these 3 in 1 machines?

3D Printer CP-01 3D Printer 3 in 1 Print 4800RPM Laser Engraving 3D Printing CNC Cutting Function 3D Printer Filament YJXUSHYQ : Amazon.ca: Industrial & Scientific

www.amazon.ca

Just popped up on my page today. A friend of mine one town over has a nice CNC that I can use for large projects, but something like this could be pretty handy for small jobs.

Clover11 · Jul 7, 2021

I got my Prusa Mk3S+ kit about two weeks ago. Spent a week putting it together at night after the wife went to bed. I enjoyed the build but probably spent closer to 15 hours building it which is around double what they say to expect. Ha, probably tells you everything you need to know about me. I was really just enjoying myself though and cranked the tunes and never even approached sobriety during the build. I was also being a complete perfectionist and took things apart and put them back together more then once to get things just right. I know I did not need to be so exact, but I was just unwinding and enjoying everything. If you enjoy building stuff, I think you will probably enjoy building this. Nothing was very hard and it was kind of like big kid LEGOS.

I have been printing pretty much nonstop since I got it all setup. Been some learning on my end getting the first layer right and adjusting for different filaments. All the jumping around I am doing is probably not the best but I am kind of figuring it out as I go. I am now wanting to really dig into PrusaSlicer and learn how I can dial things in a little more. Beyond that, I am also looking to start designing my own prints and think I am going to dive into Fusion360 to start.

Anyone have any MasterClass, some type of structured online classes or anything like that that they would recommend? I have never really done any real CAD or modeling work and would love something a little more structured then just finding random YouTube videos and trying to piece everything together myself.

RCHeliguy · Jul 7, 2021

I wish I could give you recommendations. I just googled how to do things as I needed them.

I really enjoy Fusion 360, but I do have some AutoCAD experience.

If you enjoy assembling a 3D printer that much, you might have a look at RC Helicopters. There is complexity in buliding one correctly, and setting up the flybarless controller, and ESC and transmitter and while you are doing that you can use an RC flight simulator like AccuRC or Realflight to learn how to fly which is an entirely new adventure. Flying a real RC heli is scary at first, especially when maidening your first.

Clover11 · Jul 8, 2021

RCHeliguy said:
I wish I could give you recommendations. I just googled how to do things as I needed them.

I really enjoy Fusion 360, but I do have some AutoCAD experience.

If you enjoy assembling a 3D printer that much, you might have a look at RC Helicopters. There is complexity in buliding one correctly, and setting up the flybarless controller, and ESC and transmitter and while you are doing that you can use an RC flight simulator like AccuRC or Realflight to learn how to fly which is an entirely new adventure. Flying a real RC heli is scary at first, especially when maidening your first.

I'll probably give it a shot someday actually. Seems like fun to me and I know they have come a long way. I also want to build one of those Japanese drift RC cars.

I actually printed off a couple of your designs already and both worked great for me. The glove holder and the the Simucube kill switch button box/mount. Thanks for sharing both of those. Really, thank you.

I keep looking at your button box as aspirational goal. That is incredible but to be honest it is pretty intimidating. Not that you did not share great photos, just the wiring for me looks to be multiple steps above anything I have done before and you made it look so clean with the ribbon cables. I have another button box and I am toying around with the idea of modifying your design to use the board. buttons, encoders, and switches i have from that box. I really like how you laid everything out with different sections so your hands tan tell what you are doing without needing to look. I'm probably better off just following what you design exactly instead of trying to make what I already have work in your design. Hopefully I will reach out to you someday for advice and can let you know how it goes.

RCHeliguy · Jul 8, 2021

Glad you are enjoying those designs. The glove holder is by far the most popular thing I've ever shared on Thingaverse. Simple and clean always wins.

I won't lie, the button box takes some effort, but you seem like you have a methodical nature to you. The ribbon connectors work well and connecting the individual panel controls to the board side of the connectors isn't too bad. What is tough is routing all the wires to the button box board and the debugging of any controls that are not initially working. Also the attachment bolts that clamp it to the Simlab vertical wheelbase plate are challenging to reach when you have all those wires in place.

I'm sure I could redesign it with more room and better isolated attachment points to make that easier, but after I finished this project and had mine working, I was ready to put it down and move on. The final design actually has improvements that I never printed for myself where I ended up using a hot knife to cut holes to make things work better and then updated the designs with necessary holes for other people.

Right now I'm very busy with my normal work, but it is possible I will return to that project with a lessons learned approach to making it easier to assemble.

The other issue if you downloaded the BOM excel spreadsheet is that there are a few hundred dollars in parts in that button box.

GeekyDeaks · Jul 8, 2021

If you have any coding experience @Clover11, then I would like to suggest taking a quick look at OpenSCAD. I used to use Fusion360 and found it to be a great product, but because I didn't use it enough, I found I end up spending more time on looking up how to do a specific operation than actually doing it. With OpenSCAD, I just find myself thinking about geometric operations and the parameterisation was more intuitive for me due to my coding background. I could also use my normal workflow for revision control as it's just a bunch of text files. It's got some annoying flaws though, for example fillets are a royal PITA at first and the inbuilt editor is pretty rubbish so I had to spend some time getting vscode to work smoothly with it.

An example: https://github.com/GeekyDeaks/g29-hall-sensor-mod/blob/master/pot/pot.scad

RCHeliguy · Mar 27, 2022

I know this is an old thread, but a friend of mine made this and I found it interesting.

GitHub - nat1craft/OctoLEDSign: This code supports an LED Matrix sign that reads information from Octoprint via MQTT. The sign can display such things as the current operation (status), the extruder or bed temp, the filename, etc.

This code supports an LED Matrix sign that reads information from Octoprint via MQTT. The sign can display such things as the current operation (status), the extruder or bed temp, the filename, etc...

github.com

I think this is a great example of being "into" 3D printing as a hobby in itself.

Where he has a large sign prominently over his 3D printer, I keep mine under a box where I can't see it in a guest bedroom. Where he apparently looks at his 3D printer while it's working, I completely ignore mine until the timer on my phone tells me the print is ready.

I just thought this was a great comparison between how two people look at the exact same device and see things very differently.

I saw the review below where he says the Ender 3 S1 is looking like more of a finished product vs. a project. Although he mentioned that you would probably want to replace the printing surface that didn't last long that he considered this a step in the right direction. However... within the Ender community I've seen the S1 ripped because you could upgrade the less than half as expensive Ender for less money. Hence the product vs project philosophy. Meanwhile I would say that at $429 + new print plate, that the S1 is just close enough in cost the Prusa which is definitely a finished product.

Jump to 2:45 to hear the whole but I wanted to upgrade everything myself argument

FYI, still loving my Prusa i3 mk3S. I recently finished the project below and this involved over hundred print jobs using 3 filaments and 2 nozzle sizes. I never waited to see if the first layer went down. I just printed, removed parts and started the next print. I did calibrate the Z axis between nozzle changes and I cleaned my build plate periodically if it looked like I had oil from my hands building up.